


Remember This, Remember Me

by TheFaerieChild



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Angst, Death, Drama, Family, Final Thoughts, Gen, Hurt, Last words, Loss, Sacrifice, Tragedy, Trauma, loss of a loved one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 12:25:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16095647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFaerieChild/pseuds/TheFaerieChild
Summary: Remember this, remember him, remember me; the final thoughts of James as he dies, plagued by his regrets, his ego, his failures, and the burden it places on the shoulders of the only constant in his life that loved him unconditionally—his beloved child. The one person he never meant to hurt but did so, anyway.





	Remember This, Remember Me

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Luckily our hotel room has complimentary wi-fi (I was previously told we wouldn't :U), and I've been slowly working through rewriting my old oneshots (as many of you have probably seen before) so here's another one up! A revision of my old fanfic one shot, "Famous Last Words", now renamed to "Remember This, Remember Me".
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy the rewrite! I'm sure that James probably comes off as a little more selfish here than in game, and that's because as considerate and kind and gentle as he can seem, I picture him as being a scientist firstly--his intelligence and kindness is curbed in a sense by pride and ego, evidenced by how he took off to help Purity again 20 years after the fact. I think it was partly to help the Wasteland, of course, but he was obsessed with figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it. As well, I left the Lone Wanderer here female but nameless.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment/review to let me know what you thought about the rewrite!
> 
> Happy reading, happy writing
> 
> ~Faerie signing out

* * *

 

_Remember this now, my darling._

I never wanted to see you cry.

I never wanted to see you so upset—pounding on the glass between us as I had my final stand.

I never wanted for you to be apart of this... to be so confused and disappointed in me.

I never wanted to fail you.

I never meant to.

_I'm so sorry._

But I did this for you, though I know the solace in that is scarce in the face of every crime I committed against you. In the lying, the hiding, the running away... and all the excuses I made for my actions feel inexcusable now. _Unforgivable,_ now, when all I can say is  _I'm sorry._  How cruel life is in our final moments when we're robbed of the time to say all the things we never said, to find courage in speaking those words we never had the strength to say before.

I wish I had the time to tell you how much I loved you. I wish I had the strength to admit I was wrong.

_I did this for you_  and it's so cruel of me to say it and to keep on repeating it. I never meant for it to happen this way—for the vault to collapse or for you to be chased out by the people you once loved and were loved by. I never meant to cause Jonas' death—...

I remember my last few moments with him as we planned my escape out of 101. He reassured me that I had to go on, that I had the right to it; he had to keep reminding me that you were a grown woman who didn't need her daddy around anymore, and that part of emptying the proverbial nest was to move on with my life and continue seeking my own endeavors. I took that advice to an extreme because it was convenient for my agenda. It's more than evident now.

Despite the glass between us—despite the predicament we're in—I can't help but become a little mawkish as I look back into your face. The realization hasn't hit you yet, what I'm about to do, but I can see the uneasy dread in your gaze as you look into the rotunda and watch my hands nervously. Grown woman as you are, I can see the little girl inside you now; wanting nothing more than to be with her daddy in the face of her own fear and uncertainty. I was supposed to be a constant in your life. I was supposed to be there for you, to keep you safe and protected—Vault 101 is a testament to that—and yet I dragged you out into this awful world because of my own selfishness.

Madison always told me that I was all ego before I was all heart.

Turning back to the console, I plug in Revelation 21:6 with Enclave guns pointed at my head, targeting to shoot to kill.

Looking back over my shoulder, I glance back at you one last time. I never wanted to see you covered in the grime of this place or burdened by the weight of my choices.

An explosion in the Memorial rocks the ground under my feet, throwing me against the console under a revolving, siren light and blaring alarms. I see Colonel Autumn beside me, unable to keep up on his feet and he collides into the wall, the two unarmored soldiers flanking him barely staying upright.

If I had known it would've happened this way,  _ **believe me,**  little love,_ I would have stayed down in 101 with you; I would've found a way to be content with the monotony for the rest of my life. Sometimes the promise of health and safety isn't enough and humans are self-destructive creatures in that aspect... the more we focus on remaining boring, safe, _predictable,_  the more we seek adventure. We forget the other side of that coin.

_I_  forgot the other side of that coin.

Adventure doesn't seem so grand and glory doesn't seem all that enticing and the ' _Good Fight_ ' doesn't seem so good anymore when you come to sacrifice everything else.

_I'm so sorry._

The realization's in your face, now.

You know what I'm doing.

You wish you didn't.

Colonel Autumn finally collapses to the ground at my side as I stumble backward from another blast of concentrated radiation, flinging me back against the door. My head hits it first and I'm dizzy as I turn over onto my side to look back at you. You fall to your knees to keep eye level with me, sobbing something I can't hear over the alarms—the emergency lights glinting off your tearing eyes. Madison's pulling at your shoulders to get you back up to your feet but her own, mortified gaze won't leave my face, asking me  _why_.

She thinks I'm doing this for 'all ego', to keep the Enclave from claiming Purity.

I look at you. No, it's 'all heart' now.

She had the same look on her face when I walked through the door into her laboratory aboard Rivet City, having resurrected it again when I told her I wanted to reopen Purity and she claimed I was absolutely mad. I reassured that she was right in that but it didn't  _seem_  very reassuring for her, and I can understand why.

I can feel the radiation seeping into me. I feel it burning at my skin as if it were flaying my flesh from bone but I can't bring myself to scream as my eyes search yours. Barely being able to manage so much as a whimper, I mouth for you both to run.  _Run!_  See it in my eyes that I don't want this for you—run from Purity, run  _far_ from it—let the blasted Brotherhood take it back for all I care!—just don't let Purity or the Enclave take you from this life, from this world! I can let my dream, the dream of your mother and I, to die peacefully if it only meant that you would be safe!

But you refuse to go. You shove Madison away and refuse to leave me, your hands trembling against the glass with torn nails as if you're trying to claw through it just to get to me, your eyes wide and your mouth howling. I lose sight of you as my vision begins to blur and my body quivers with an insufferable ache, clustering in the joints of my bones as I raise my hand to meet feebly with yours, fingers splayed across the glass, the Geiger counter on my Pip-Boy clicking uselessly. The radiation's definitely strong, or there's a leak somewhere spilling out of the rotunda because I can see your own counter's needle clicking lethargically. Patting the glass gently with a curled fist, my strike weak, I silently beg you with a desperate stare to  _ **go.**_

I turn away to vomit as the radiation consumes me in seconds, Colonel Autumn at my side staring back at me with a dead-eyed expression, his soldiers choking on the bile rising in their own throats, flooding their lungs as their skin bubbles and turns raw. I see your mouth forming words; " _It should have been me! It can't be you!"_

I'm so tired, now. The pain's gone. I thought I was immortal, once, while I was still young and my back wouldn't crack whenever I bent over to pick up a dropped pen—and despite knowing my impending death, despite knowing that my twisting face would be the last vision you'd have of me, I feel immortal once again; unbroken, impervious,  _infinite._

_I am_ _**infinite.** _

Another of my regrets is not speaking more on our trip back from Vault 112... how I kept hushing you at every question you gave, speaking only when it was necessary, stopping only when we  _absolutely_ had to—but you never reacted poorly. You were too happy being with me again to pick fights over my behavior but I wish now you had put me in my place. I wish I wasn't so prideful or self-centered to realize that I should have been more tempered... considerate. Kind. You deserved so many answers and now you'll never hear them.

I finally drop to the floor.

_Leave me._

My fingers trail away from the glass, losing the connection between our palms.

_**Please.** _

I can feel the darkness creeping up on me with a cold, skeletal hand grazing my shoulder in welcome. Madison pulls you up off the floor defiantly and drags you down the stairs, your expression too startled, too  _disbelieving_ in my body slumped against the glass door to push her away another time. You go with her helplessly, disappearing from my sight as the last thing I will ever see as I depart this world.

A fallen smile graces my corpse as I leave my life behind me.

My little love, my life,  _my child. **The one thing I never regretted in my life.**_

_I'm so sorry._

I never wanted to see you cry.

I never wanted to see you like this—to leave this way, retreating with last words exchanged like this.

I never wanted for you to be apart of this... to be dragged away by my selfishness and my pride, but in the After I know this isn't the end. It can't be, not yet, as Colonel Autumn rises jaggedly from the floor with labored breathing, rocking up to his feet as an empty syringe falls from the folds of his trench coat. If he rose anymore gracefully, he would have looked like a phoenix rising from the ashes of Project Purity. She would become prey for the talons of the Enclave.

I never wanted to fail you, but in the end, I know I have.

I never meant to. I never meant for any of this, but it's not enough anymore.

_So remember this now, my darling._

All I ever wanted was to be a good father.


End file.
